Questions for Covey: Communicating Potential
May 01, 2008
This month's questions were submitted by Baptist Health Care's Janet Day, HT, BBA, director of organizational and cultural development.
By Stephen Covey
JD: In "The 8th Habit," one of the key themes is creating a culture that communicates to everyone their potential. What successful tactics have you seen other organizations deploy to build a culture where all employees (not just leaders to employees) communicate their potential to one another?
SC: The first way to create such a culture lies in the way you recruit and select. When I interview someone, I like to ask questions such as, "What do you love doing?" "What are you really good at?" "In fact, going back to your earliest memories, what have you always been good at?" The second lies in the way you place them. The key is to achieve an overlapping between their talent, their passion, and their desire to make a difference and live with integrity with a real need in the organization and marketplace. The third is in the way you train and develop them to be part of a complementary team, so strengths are made productive and weaknesses are made irrelevant by the strengths of others. The fourth is in the way they are rewarded and compensated, so they are reinforced psychologically, socially, and financially. The fifth lies in the way their "boss" sees himself or herself as a servant-leader, rather than as a check-up, hovering supervisor or control freak. The sixth is in the way all structures, systems, processes, and formal leaders constantly affirm their worth and their potential.
JD: Some leaders are better than others at empowering their employees. This sometimes can cause rifts between groups that collaborate with one another. What is the best way to improve the collaboration between teams when this is the case?
SC: This would be the principle: Involve the people who are part of the different teams in the discussion of that issue and synergistically work out a solution together. The Industrial Age approach would be to come up with "our" answer and impose it. The Knowledge Worker Age solution is to assume good faith and intelligence and the commitment to common purposes and principles on the part of these teams, so that you have the basis for producing a third-alternative solution. If there isn't a common set of principles and purposes, then use the same process to deal with that issue first.
JD: What are the challenges of leading a globally networked team?
SC: Obviously, the first challenge is a lack of face-to-face communication, where the transference of emotion takes place and a genuine liking and respect develops. That's why it's important to have such face-to-face meetings, at least annually, so people get to know each other in both informal and formal ways. Then put technology to work. Remember, however, that technology is a great servant but a bad master. Until the trust is high, it's difficult to communicate in shorthand and to really produce third-alternative solutions that harmonize the real cultural and political differences that exist around the world.
JD: How do you motivate people to do something when you're not in front of them? Can you motivate from a distance, and if so, how can that motivation be maintained over the long term?
SC: Remember, the concept of motivation is internal, not external. If you overlap people's talents, passion, and conscience with need, they will feel inspired and intrinsically motivated. External or extrinsic motivation is short-lived and requires continual escalation, communication, and psych-up. So the key is helping people find their voice in connection with the problems, challenges, and needs. One other point: Take the very issue you're discussing to the people and let them synergize around it and produce a third-alternative solution that is created through synergistic communication and is better than what anyone initially proposed.
Stephen R. Covey is co-founder of FranklinCovey and author of "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" and "The 8th Habit."
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